The Given Sacrifice (37 page)

They trudged away muttering variations on
euuuw
. Faramir followed, dancing in glee.

“Crappy-heads!” he called. “Cheaters
and
crappy-heads!”

He stopped with the second repetition; he was a good-hearted kid, though a bit thoughtless,
even by nine-year-old standards. A minute later Elvellon came by, a solid if rather
slow woman in her thirties, a former Cutter slave who’d settled among the Rangers
not least because being tongueless was less of a disadvantage in a group where everyone
knew Sign. She worked for Mary and Ritva as a handyperson, and seemed devoted to the
kids without the least desire for any of her own. Nobody asked about her past.

They OK?
Her fingers asked.

Just a bit smelly,
Ingolf said, and explained.

She laughed without opening her teeth and walked after them, casting:

I get them ready for dinner. Mothers back soon,
over her shoulder.

Ingolf eyed the tree, where fifteen or twenty of the monkeys were chattering and leaping
around to celebrate their triumph.

“Acting a bit like my boy, eh?” Ian said.

“We’re definitely going to have to do something about
them
.”

“Bobcats?” Ian mused. “Falcons? Baited traps?”

“Arrows,” Ingolf said. “It’s the only way to be sure.”

Then their heads turned. The fluting whistle of the sentries’ call came through the
afternoon air, only distinguishable from birds if you knew, and they relaxed as it
said
our people come.

Mary and Ritva had taken a half dozen of the younger Rangers out, not simply hunting
for the pot but to start the familiarization process; really knowing every inch of
your territory went with the job. All the hunters had returned, and over the packhorses
were . . .

“Venison,” Ian said hollowly. “Oh, boy, what a treat. On days in which the sun rises
in the east, we Dúnedain Rangers shall have venison for dinner. I’m going to grow
antlers this year, I can feel the buds itching.”

“Looks like they got a yearling porker, too, and some turkeys . . . and
hel
-lo, there are visitors.”

A dozen more riders came behind the Ranger party.

“Edain, by Eru! That’s six of the High King’s Archers and—”

Órlaith threw herself off the horse and into his arms, a solid weight of fast-growing
teenager.

“Uncle Ingolf!”

•   •   •

“Sorry the house isn’t fit for company, but we’re doing spring-cleaning,” Ingolf said.

Órlaith laughed as he jerked a thumb at a huge pile of slightly musty-smelling planks
and laths that lay not far from the ancient stone building; not far from that was
a pile of broken tile, ready to be ground for tempering powder in the new ones that
would be made as soon as the kiln was built. The round Dúnedain tents were grouped
around their hearth-fires, and they’d pitched their own set—the High King’s Archers
had three domed Clan-style bells, and she and Herry had a slightly larger rectangular
model. For this trip she’d managed to escape the train of Court servants, all except
for a couple of groom-roustabouts and the bowmen.

It had helped that things at Todenangst had been so frantic. Her father had been quietly
and wisely sympathetic to her desire to escape, which had been wonderful but less
comfort than she’d expected.

Even if your Da is wise and strong and King, he can’t make everything better. I must
be getting older,
she thought.

There hadn’t been much time to talk with the Rangers, apart from the
Alyssa and Cole send their greetings and the youngest is doing fine
level. She didn’t know whether to be happy or depressed about that.

They all lay sprawled about the fire, with sparks drifting upward towards the shimmering
roof of the oak’s new leaves. Skewers of boar loin dressed with wild garlic were sizzling,
and iron Dutch ovens of biscuits stood in a raked-down section of the coals, and a
pot of wild greens was bubbling—amole leaves, with another of mashed dock. The smell
made her mouth water despite it all; there was nothing like a long day in the saddle
to work up an appetite.

Da said that getting tired and using my body would help.
Hard work keeps sorrow at bay until you’re strong enough to deal with it.
He was right . . . again.

Maccon laid his huge gruesome head in her lap and rolled his eyes up at her, and she
rubbed his graying chops. He was getting old . . . she had that on the brain right
now.

“Yes, you’ll all get
even more
,” she said, leaning back against her saddle; two of his latest crop of puppies were
a little farther from the fire, tall lanky shaggy young beasts named the MacMaccons.
“Like you haven’t been gorging on guts.”

She was in a kilt and plaid again, which was a relief—the long deathbed wait in Castle
Todenangst had all been in Associate formal women’s dress, for which at thirteen she
was now just old enough. She hadn’t complained under the circumstances, but enough
was enough.

She sighed. You could travel a thousand miles, but you couldn’t run away from your
thoughts; her father had told her that, too. She turned to Ingolf instead.

“It’s good to see you again, Unc’,” she said. Then, peering closer: “Are you going
bald? I can see firelight on your
scalp.
”

There was a roar of laughter around the fire, which surprised her; Mary Vogeler was
laughing harder than any. Ingolf ran one big battered hand over his head, which was
indeed getting a bit thinly thatched, though there wasn’t much gray in it.

“Male-pattern baldness runs in my family,” he said ruefully. “Dad, my older brother . . .
damned if I’m going to grow a middle-aged Vogeler beer gut, though.”

Heuradys nudged her with the toe of her boot; she was looking quite dashing in her
squire’s hunting outfit, with a Montero hat sporting a peacock feather tilted back
on her bobbed mahogany hair; she had the knack of doing that even after hard travel
through the wilderness. Unfairly, she’d shot up and filled out over the last couple
of years, while Órlaith still had the build of a tall gawky plank. The two years between
them
still
made a lot of difference.

“Ah, the comfort there’s to be had in the voices of the young!” Edain said, grinning
and taking a swig from a jug covered in straw that was doing the rounds. “Fair makes
a man spring about like a goat, his youth renewed, it does not.”

“Edain, you’re ten years younger than me,” Ingolf said, and smiled himself in a mock-nasty
way. “Just you
wait
.”

“What brings you down this way?” Ian said.

“Oh . . . I wanted to get out of . . . of the places I’m usually in,” she said. Then
she blurted: “Nona died. My . . . the Queen Mother,” she said in a rush.

There were exclamations, but nobody among the Dúnedain knew her Nona Sandra the way
she did. Sandra Arminger had been feared, and hated, and widely respected; she’d also
been loved, but that mainly by people she was closer to.

“We’d heard that she was ill, of course,” Ritva said.

A slightly awkward silence fell, and Órlaith continued doggedly. “We . . . there was
some warning, but it came on fast and the end. I was there. . . .”

Memory took her back. The smell of incense, the murmur of chanted prayer in the background.
John crying silently, tears trickling down his face from still brown eyes; Maria and
Lorcan had said their good-byes and then been ushered out, they were too young yet
to understand. Sandra had smiled and managed to squeeze Órlaith’s hand. They were
all waiting as the gaslamps flickered, watching the slow rise and fall of the sheet
over her breast, and the glisten of the holy oil on her eyelids.

Then her eyes fluttered open. They seemed to be seeing
something
. When she spoke, her voice was very quiet but clear, perfectly ordinary:

“Norman, we have to talk.”

Órlaith squeezed her eyes shut on the memory: “And then she died,” she whispered.
“She was just gone, and I realized how
alive
she’d always been. There was always this crackle around her. Like somewhere thoughts
were coming out like sparks from a burning pine log.”

When she opened her eyes again, the others were looking at her a little oddly: it
was not the time you’d expect her to leave the family to go on a ramble. All those
close to the fire were kin to her or the next thing to it, and old companions of her
father on the Quest who’d helped raise her on and off.

“I wouldn’t go attend the funeral mass,” she blurted. “I mean, I wouldn’t take Communion
at it. I won’t, anymore, I should never have been confirmed. I’ve decided I’m of the
Old Religion. I know we’re allowed to see it as . . . as you know, another form of
the same thing, so we can do the ceremonies if we need to, but I
won’t
. I won’t deceive Mom. John’s a good Catholic, but I’ll never be. We had a big fight
about it—mostly me yelling and her being so
quiet.
So I had to, to get away.”

Edain reached over and put a hand on her back for a moment. “That’s hard, my Golden
Princess. Matti your mother I’ve known all my life, and she’s a good Queen and an
even better friend and a true comrade, but at seventh and last she’s cowan, and . . .
that means there are things she does not ken.”

Órlaith nodded, scrubbing at her eyes.

“Oh, I don’t know, Órry,” Heuradys said, putting her arm around her shoulders. “My
lady mother’s a witch and I’ve had some
really
awkward moments with her, too.”

“You have?” Órlaith asked.

“Yes, by the Gray-Eyed! Just a few months ago I had to sit her down and tell her something
she
really
didn’t want to hear. She wasn’t happy about it, either, any more than your mother
was.”

“You
did
?” Órlaith said; she couldn’t imagine the calmly cheerful Lady Delia de Stafford getting
all coldly miserable the way her own mother had. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Sort of embarrassing, really. It was a family council at Montinore Manor back on
Barony Ath, when I was back for the Twelve Days . . . Yule . . . and it was just me
and her and Auntie Tiph—”

She stopped and glared at Ian, who was chortling. “What exactly is funny? I haven’t
got to that part yet, unless you think my whole family is funny, Lord Ian?”

“Anyone calling
Lady Death
her
auntie
, that’s funny. Sorry, sorry.”

“Well,
I
don’t call her Lady Death, you know. And my lord my father Count Rigobert was there,
he spends that season with us mostly,” she went on quellingly. “You see, my lady mother
had been throwing nice girls from her coven my way since I turned fifteen, and I just
had to tell her
Mom, I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I
really
like boys better.
”

“What did she say?” Órlaith asked, startled into intense interest.

“She sort of
looked
at me . . . you know how mothers do, like you’re still about four . . . and put her
hand on mine and said in this amazingly irritating calm voice:
‘Darling, isn’t it possible this is just a phase you’re going through?’
”

Heuradys smiled ruefully at the ring of grins. “And my lord my father and Auntie Tiph
didn’t help.”

“Did they get upset too?” Órlaith asked.

“No, they laughed. I mean, really laughed—I thought my lord my father was going to
hurt himself. So Mom and I
both
got mad at them, which made them laugh even harder. I’ve never seen Auntie Tiph break
up that way, not even when she heard about Sir Boleslav trying to drink a whole bottle
of vodka standing in a castle window and the moat had been drained, and my lord my
father was staggering when he got up and left. I think he told Sir Julio because then
I could hear
him
laughing after a while.”

Ingolf shook his head and grinned and seemed to be searching his memory.

Ritva frowned a little. “It’s sort of funny . . . I mean, most Associates are such
strong Catholics and they’re really odd about things like that, so I can see, you
know, some other mother doing things just like that if it were the other way ’round,
or screaming and fainting . . . but why was it
that
funny?”

“I asked my lord my father and he just said I was far too young to understand—and
so was my mother, a little too young. So it must be some pre-Change thing. You forget
he’s not a Changeling sometimes because he’s so . . . not a fuddy-duddy. Even Auntie
Tiph isn’t a Changeling, not all the way—she was as old at the Change as you are now,
Órry. But my lady mother was just a kid, younger than my sister Yolande.”

The story seemed to break the awkwardness, and everyone pitched into dinner. Órlaith
found her appetite was right back, and when you were sharp-set wild boar was absolutely
scrumptious, rich but stronger-tasting than domestic pork. There wasn’t any butter
for the biscuits, but the drippings did fine, and then her aunts Mary and Ritva got
out their mandolin and flute.

Much later in the tent, she reached across to the other cot and squeezed Heuradys’
hand in the darkness, the calluses matching her own.

“Thanks, Herry. You’ve been a real brick.”

“Hey, I’m going to be your liege-sworn knight someday, Órry.”

“I know. But it’s even better to have a friend. ’night.”

Dun Juniper, Dùthchas of
the Clan Mackenzie

(formerly western Oregon)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

Beltane Eve, Change Year 42/2040 AD

Ó
rlaith almost missed her step in the dance as she checked the bower she’d built out
of the corner of her eye.

The
nemed
of Dun Juniper was a place whose name woke awe across the High Kingdom, the Sacred
Wood. A circle of ancient oaks stood on a knee of land on the side of the mountain,
many planted long ago with their successors in all stages of growth, a ring of smooth
brown trunks like hundred-foot pillars and a continuous band of intermingled branches
above bright-with-the-green new leaves. The path upward to the plateau was steep,
winding back and forth through the dense green fir-woods, but it was filled tonight—not
only with visitors from all over the Clan’s dùthchas, but others from across Montival
and even a few from beyond it.

For this was the center of the Old Faith in the world the Change had made, and its
mistress was Goddess-on-Earth.

Tonight the great trees of the circle were bound together with chains of woven flowers,
budding roses, wood hyacinths and lilies of the valley, pansies and impatiens and
larkspur. Torches burned in the wrought-iron holders at the four Quarters, and fire
flickered before the shaped boulder that was the altar. They beckoned and glittered
through the cool dampness and the thickness of the hillside firs. It was a gathering,
a party really . . . but there was something of
otherness
about this place, even on a quiet day alone. Tonight that feeling was raw and strong,
the focused belief of the multitude like a weight stretching thin the walls of the
world.

Órlaith shivered a little in spite of the thick white wool robe she wore, feeling
goose bumps against the fabric.

Old Sybil Leek said it: Let those who would dance through the woods skyclad. I have
too much respect for my own skin!

Her feet swayed and moved to the rhythm that turned the dancer’s torches in the long
line down the hillside. The ancient dancing style the Mackenzies practiced had various
and sundry purposes; keeping you warm while on the trail to the
nemed
was certainly one of them. Another was the way the rhythm took you beyond yourself,
until it seemed to settle into bone and breath and heartbeat.

Fiorbhinn Mackenzie was May Queen. She sang greeting to flute and bohdrán as she danced,
her silver and crystal-embroidered robe like a glitter on dew-starred grass between
the two balefires at the entrance to the plateau; the only other sound was the rippling
of the fire as it ate the fir-wood, and the wind soughing in the tops of the trees.
Her hands were upraised, and her great pale eyes full of the moonlight; long blond
hair swept down past the shoulders of her robe mingled with wreaths of white meadowsweet
and blue hyacinth.

The procession whirled by on either side, each dancer like notes of the song:

“Moon rise and star fall

Fire burn and night wind call

Drum beat the wild song

That heart sings at summer’s dawn!”

The robed procession wound its way into the clearing, a spiral around the great circle
of the
nemed
. Juniper Mackenzie was present with her consort Nigel Loring, seated in a pair of
carved chairs whose backs echoed the twin ravens at the top of her staff and the corvine
beak of his mask, each wrapped in a thick cloak. Her lined face was smiling, but this
time for the first Beltane since the Change she was not presiding over the celebrations.
That was for her daughter and successor Maude who now had the Triple Moon on her brow,
no longer tanist but the Mackenzie Herself. She’d said she didn’t intend to dodder
into her grave as Chief, the time had come when the Clan needed a Changeling at its
head, and Maude could always come to her parents for advice. . . .

“Sown are the new fields

With bright seed of harvest’s yield

Far down the roots bind

The heart’s joy to summer’s time!”

That glance aside at her bower meant she nearly tripped over Aunt Maude. The Chief
laughed gently as she caught her spinning niece and righted her, her usually rather
gravely handsome features alight with the festival. Nobody was drunk before the ceremony,
but wine and the whirling ecstasy of the dance and drums were in many veins. Órlaith
gripped Maude tightly for one short instant before a quick, light push sent her dancing
up the path to rejoin the rest of the May Queen’s maidens, all dressed in white.

“Leave the fire and come with me

We’ll lie beneath the flowering tree

And feel the breathing of the earth

Rise and fall!”

As one of the Maidens, Órlaith had set many of the stitches in the May Queen’s robe,
and the more hidden white ones on her own, matching the white rhododendron flowers
confining her hair. Five maidens attended the Queen, for the Elements and the Quarters
and the hidden thing that united them all.

Earth and Air and Fire and Water! And Spirit!

She was Air, a belt of pale blue sapphires and cloudy white opals set in silver around
her waist to symbolize it. Fire was the daughter of
fiosaiche
Meadhbh Beauregard Mackenzie, all dark skin and tossing plaited hair, her white robes
belted with ruby and carnelian and gold. Earth and Water were both younger, Earth
the granddaughter of Cynthia Carson, Water Diana Trethgar’s eldest boy’s youngest
daughter. Spirit was Heuradys d’Ath, grinning at her companions with an imp’s light
in her amber eyes.

“The green time sings its song again

To wake the hill, to wake the glen

And raise in every living thing

An answering call!”

Órlaith smiled widely at Delia de Stafford as she danced by, her daughter Yolande
laughing behind her, their black tossing hair the same shade of night with the white
blossom in it like stars. Órlaith’s stitching had improved enormously in five weeks
of tutoring Delia had given her and her robe reflected it. A Beltane robe was something
you made with your own hands, as an offering.

“Leap o’er the May fire

Hold close your sweet desire

For life’s Wheel will grant soon

The heart’s wish for summer’s bloom!”

Which is what I want!
Órlaith thought.

Suddenly she was breathing quickly at the sound of horns lowing and dunting through
the wood, as if the sound snatched her breath away. There was a music in that call
too, low and hoarse and . . .
hot
somehow, like the sound of the bull elk’s call echoing across a mountainside.

And as Fiorbhinn danced through the ancient oaks’ arch, the men from Cernunnos’ court
entered the sacred grove from all points, a leaping torrent of torches and wildness,
bare skin and paint and tossing fire. Raghnall McClintock of Clan McClintock was the
Horned One tonight. Years back his father had sent him to Dun Juniper to learn the
trade of chief, for the head of a clan was intermediary with the Powers as much as
ruler and battle-leader, his folk’s link to the land and ancestors. Now he returned
from his southern hills to do honor to its mistress. He was a tall man, strong through
the shoulders and with long brown hair drawn back in the McClintock queue through
carved bone rings, his face half-hidden behind the tanned deer mask.

And his Fire Squire was Diarmuid Tinnart McClintock, whom she’d met days ago in the
preparations for the ceremony. Their glances had crossed. . . .

“Green shoot and pale flower

Garland the Beltane bower

Circle with joined hands

For heart shines with summer’s dance!”

Órlaith felt the movement of her blood, from face and heart and loins out to the tips
of fingers and toes, an unfolding like flowers beneath the sun, like waves beating
on a beach, a sweet inevitable rightness. Diarmuid was wearing the horns and deer
breechclout, his feet bare on the flowered turf and the muscles of a runner and bowman
moving clear as liquid metal beneath white skin that glowed taut and clear. Though
he was too young for a McClintock warrior’s tattoos, swirling blue patterns in woad
showed where they would run on back and shoulders, legs and arms. From behind the
bright red paint on his face, she could see his dark blue eyes cast about, seeking
her among the maidens.

Generally I pay more attention to ritual,
she thought, halting in her dance in Earth’s place.
But ritual is symbol and this is the truth it speaks.

“Leave the fire and come with me

To walk beside the dreaming sea

And watch the fading of the stars

As the new day dawns!”

Cynthia Carson giggled and pushed her back to Air’s proper place.

“Your ribbon is
blue!
” she whispered and exploded into giggles again.

Órlaith felt herself flush to the roots of her hair, trying to keep her place in the
circle.

Panpipes sounded, weaving themselves into the hymn. She skipped forward to the maypole
set in the center. Fiorbhinn and Raghnall seized the silver and gold ribbons. Each
pair of Maiden and Squire took the colored ribbon of their Attribute and backed away,
turning the long ribbons into a net of colored tracery in the fire-shot darkness.

“We’ll try to catch time in our hands

To hold the wave against the sand

And watch this glow upon the land

That soon will be gone!”

The drums beat and Órlaith felt a shiver stroke her backbone, like the touch of a
feather drawn from the base of her spine to the nape of her neck.

This year,
she prayed.
Mother-of-All, this year, when we are both together, please let him . . .

She hesitated, not sure what she wanted from Diarmuid this year. There was a sense
of eyes opening at the back of existence. A presence . . . a Presence . . . fond and
amused, gone before she could be sure it was anything but her own yearning. Like a
warm breeze carrying with it a scent of cinnamon and musk.

The circle had danced forward and back, now pulling on the orange and purple ribbons.
And the beat came and Órlaith danced, weaving in and out, over and over, hand touching
each passing dancer, men
tuathal
, women
deosil
, invoking and evoking the spring, the growth, the green, the rain. And each time
Diarmuid went past, he stroked her palm rather than swing her hand.

“So drum beat and flute sound

Once more we’ll circle ’round

For the world turns and the Wheel spins

And all ends that once begins!

This green hour, the heart knows,

Is brief as the budding rose

Though Wheel turn and bloom fade

The heart sings the birth of May!”

The ribbons tightened down as they danced and circled, binding the May Queen and May
King in place, against the pole and each other, then the purple and orange ribbons
closed upon her and the other Maidens and Squires, they were pressed forward, into
the center, bound to the pole by the rest. The dancers halted and flung their hands
up in a roar of laughter.

Órlaith heard the great shout and whispered, “Merry meet and merry part . . .”

“And merry get these ribbons gone!” she heard Raghnall grumble.

Delia came and tied the maypole ribbons tightly to the top above the heads of the
May Queen and King and laughed, mischievous joy in her voice.

“So, Horned Lord, King of the Wood? Can you free yourself and take your prize?”

Maude stood beside Delia, laughing too.

“And free the Maidens and Squires that they may chase one another through the bowers!”

From the cocoon of ribbons Raghnall began to saw at the tangle of tough smooth fabric
with the flint blade tucked into his breechclout, the cloth parting to the touch of
the keen stone. By custom he should have taken the May Queen by the hand and led her
to the Queen’s Bower. Instead he caught her up in his arms and dashed headlong away,
flourishing his antlers and giving a startlingly realistic bull-elk call, while Fiorbhinn
laughed and threw up her arms in a theatrical gesture of helplessness. Maude paused
thunderstruck. Out at the edge of darkness Juniper thumped her staff on the ground
and laughed as well.

Órlaith was falling back when a feather touch on her shoulder brought her head around
and her lips into a kiss.

“Diarmuid!” she gasped and then her hand darted forward, grasping and pulling at the
wreath that encircled the gilded spikes of his antlers.

It broke and came away in her hand. By the law of the rite he must follow now; she
darted away, hearing his sudden laugh, and knew him to be behind her. She ran, darting
through the many people who cheered as she passed, calling luck-bringing—and bawdy—encouragement.
Her legs kicked high, the skirts of the robe flying. As she ran, sweet heat gathered
in her chest, and curled out, like a leaf uncurling in May indeed.

Diarmuid sprang ahead, spread his arms and she fled down another path, doubled back.

“By Flidais!” she invoked, trying to dodge under his arms and back to the main path.
He caught her by the waist, spinning her around and up, and up and up, his horns falling
off, her flower wreaths disintegrating into showers of petals. His lips sought hers,
questing at first and then as her body took fire, becoming more insistent, more demanding.
She gasped as he lifted his face and looked around.

“Where . . .” he asked, distractedly. Órlaith blinked and cast a quick glance at the
woods.

“Here!” she said. “I was with the crew that prepared this stretch.”

“A pity,” murmured Diarmuid, “a pity. I set up a bower I hoped to bring you to.”

Órlaith giggled, “But so did I! It’s a little farther up!”

There was another bower, just behind them, with an oiled tarp, strewn with petals,
a hay mattress, two quilts, one old, one new, one blue, one green, pillows and at
the far end, a small box that would have wine and nibblements for later.